2.22.15

The final Jeopardy question (answer, really) from Friday was: "On completing the "deathbed" edition of his great work, he wrote 'L. Of G. complete at last, after 33 years of hacking at it'" The response was Whitman, for his Leaves of Grass.

I always love it when they have poetry categories on Jeopardy, even though I rarely remember the authors/titles (can sometimes recite the lines though, what's with that, my brain?)

I also love it when things are serendipitous. This beautiful poem came to my email the day before or so, Darkening, then Brightening by Kim Addonizio. 

The sky keeps lying to the farmhouse,
lining up its heavy clouds
above the blue table umbrella,
then launching them over the river.
And the day feels hopeless
until it notices a few trees
dropping delicately their white petals
on the grass beside the birdhouse
perched on its wooden post,
the blinking fledglings stuffed inside
like clothes in a tiny suitcase. At first
you wandered lonely through the yard
and it was no help knowing Wordsworth
felt the same, but then Whitman
comforted you a little, and you saw
the grass as uncut hair, yearning
for the product to make it shine.
Now you lie on the couch beneath the skylight,
the sky starting to come clean,
mixing its cocktail of sadness and dazzle,
a deluge and then a digging out
and then enough time for one more
dance or kiss before it starts again,
darkening, then brightening.
You listen to the tall wooden clock
in the kitchen: its pendulum clicks
back and forth all day, and it chimes
with a pure sound, every hour on the hour,
though it always mistakes the hour.



Something about "L. of G. " that makes it beautiful (one of many things) is the relationship of the earth to the body, which this poem echoes. I'm not sure which Wordsworth work this would best relate to, perhaps that will be my homework.

Some

fasd